America at Large: When former Washington Post sportswriter Jane Leavy published her first novel, Squeeze Play, back in 1990, I recall wincing in anticipation of the effect it was likely to have on her sister scribes. Although Leavy had recently abdicated the toy department for the grown-up world of writing books, dozens of her compatriots were still struggling for acceptance in what had been a male-dominated profession.

Squeeze Play was a lively roman- a-clef whose narrator, A B Berkowitz was, like Leavy, a 5ft 1in Jewish sportswriter of the female persuasion. And it struck me at the time that the novel, between its obsession with male genitalia Berkowitz encountered in various locker rooms and the fact that its heroine wound up consummating a sexual relationship with a backup catcher, would in the end do a disservice to female sportswriters, in that it would at once reinforce old stereotypes and confirm the worst fears of America's baseball wives, who seemed united in the conviction that the only reason other women would want to enter a changing room full of naked men would be to steal their husbands.

As it turned out, Squeeze Play was so widely ignored that it didn't have much of an effect one way or the other, but years later, in the wake of the success of Leavy's best-selling biography of the reclusive former Dodgers' Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax, Harper-Collins elected to reissue the novel.

Moreover, the latest incarnation seems destined to receive a bump in sales from recent developments in Los Angeles, where life has imitated art in the Dodger locker room. Although the affair seems to have been ongoing since spring training, it only became public currency a few weeks ago, when the wife of Dodgers pitcher Derek Lowe and the husband of FOX Sports Net reporter Carolyn Hughes each confirmed that their respective spouses had become room-mates.

Once the news hit the gossip columns, FSN West belatedly removed Hughes from her post covering the Dodgers. A terse announcement by a network official revealed that "As soon as we were made aware by Mrs Lowe that a potential problem existed, we removed Carolyn from covering the Dodgers. At present, we're investigating to determine if a conflict of interest did exist. Beyond that, we can't comment on personnel issues."

But almost simultaneously FOX noted that Hughes "is expected to return as host of FSN Across America when the show is scheduled to return in mid-September".

Since Hughes's activities constituted a clear-cut conflict of interest (among other features she had aired a mawkishly sentimental piece in which she accompanied Lowe to a jewellery store to be sized for the World Series ring he had earned as a member of last year's Boston Red Sox championship team), she might appropriately have been suspended, reassigned, or fired outright on purely ethical grounds, and the FOX people didn't do much to enhance their own credibility with the slap on the wrist.

Lowe's employers had no official reaction, but Hughes's access to the Dodger Stadium press box and locker room was quietly revoked in the wake of the steamy revelations.

Late night talk-show host Jay Leno deadpanned on national television that it was "nice to see at least one Dodger scoring this year". In one sense, the operative dynamic here is somewhat blurred by the adultery issue. I don't recall any eyebrows being similarly raised a quarter-century ago when Nancy Lopez, then the best American golfer, married her first husband, television sportscaster Tim Melton, but since that fun couple met when he was assigned to do a story on her, questions probably should have arisen.

On a larger scale, the episode will be extremely harmful to female sports reporters likely to be tarred by the same brush. Every time a woman breaks a story there will be people who'll ask if she used the casting-couch route to come by her information.

Michelle Tafoya, the sideline reporter for ABC's Monday Night Football, was participating in a national conference call to publicize the upcoming football season a few weeks ago, and was asked about the likely fallout from L'Affaire Hughes et Lowe.

"If someone is going to decide that all female sportscasters are of the one ilk, cut from the same cloth, because of one of us, then that's simply not a smart way to make decisions about people," Tafoya replied diplomatically. "I would hope that because of one person's actions, or two people in the case of Lowe and Hughes, that wouldn't reflect badly on every major league pitcher or every female sportscaster."

It would be naive to suggest that Derek Lowe is the only Dodger who's been cheating on his wife, but rarely has a player been so brazenly indiscreet. Last year, before he'd even met Carolyn Hughes, he showed up for an official team function accompanied by some debutante who was clearly not Mrs Lowe.

Informed that Sox team owner John Henry might take umbrage at this breach of propriety, Lowe, according to the Boston Herald, replied "It's okay. He's a guy. He'll understand". Apparently Lowe and Hughes took only the most rudimentary steps to cover their tracks. Her number was cleverly listed under "Jeff" in his mobile directory, and after Trinka Lowe discovered an inordinate number of calls to Jeff on the monthly bill, she hired a private investigator, who presumably became the source of the dozens of cuddly photographs of Lowe and Hughes now flooding the internet.

Trinka Lowe has gone on the offensive, phoning sports talk shows and dispatching e-mails to television outlets, including Hughes' employer. In one phone call to a Los Angeles radio station she related a conversation she had had with the 'other' woman. "I talked to her and asked if this was an appropriate relationship to have with someone you cover," reported Mrs Lowe.

"To me, it's a conflict of interest. I don't think you can have a relationship with someone you're paid to report on. She said she had no problem with it."

This isn't a question of morality, it's a matter of professional ethics, and there's some irony in the fact that the questions which seemed obvious to the jilted spouse apparently didn't appear to much trouble Hughes's bosses at FOX.